“Don’t try to run away!” he bellowed. “You’ll never get away! The Old Guy’ll light thins up for me so you kin’t sneak away in the dark. Besides, your white skin shines in the night, like a rotten toadstool. You’re done for. You snatched away my hat so you could get me out here defenseless, and then Deena could stab me in the back. You and her are Falser witches, I know damn well!”
“What do you think you’re doing?” asked Dorothy. She tried to rise again but could not. It was as if the mud had fingers around her ankles and knees.
“The Old Guy’s howlin for the blood a C’yaga wimmen. And he’s gonna get all the blood he wants. It’s only fair. Deena put the knife in me, and The Old Woman got some a my blood to drink. Now it’s your turn to give The Old Guy some a yours.”
“Don’t!” screamed Deena. “Don’t! Dorothy had nothing to do with it! And you can’t blame me, after what you were doing to her!”
“She’d done everythin to me. I’m gonna make the last sacrifice to Old Guy. Then they kin do what they want to me. I don’t care. I’ll have had one moment a bein a real Real Folker.”
Deena and Dorothy both screamed. In the next second, lightning broke the darkness around them. Dorothy saw Deena hurl herself on Old Man’s back and carry him downward. Then, night again.
There was a groan. Then, another blast of light. Old Man was on his knees, bent almost double but not bent so far Dorothy could not see the handle of the knife that was in his chest.
“Oh, Christ!” wailed Deena. “When I pushed him, he must have fallen on the knife. I heard the bone in his chest break. Now he’s dying!”
Paley moaned. “Yeah, you done it now, you sure paid me back, din’t you? Paid me back for my takin the monkey off a your back and supportin you all these years.”
“Oh, Old Man,” sobbed Deena, “I didn’t mean to do it. I was just trying to save Dorothy and save you from yourself. Please! Isn’t there anything I can do for you?”
“Sure you kin. Stuff up the two big holes in my back and chest. My blood, my breath, my real soul’s flowin out a me. Guy In the Sky, what a way to die! Kilt by a crazy woman!”
“Keep quiet,” said Dorothy. “Save your strength. Deena, you run to the service station. It’ll still be open. Call a doctor.”
“Don’t go, Deena,” he said. “It’s too late. I’m hangin onto my soul by its big toe now; in a minute I’ll have to let go, and it’ll jump out a me like a beagle after a rabbit.
“Dor’thy, Dor’thy, was it the wickedness a The Old Woman put you up to this? I must a meant something to you… under the flowers… maybe it’s better… I felt like a god, then… not what I really am… a crazy old junkman… a alley man… Just think a it… fifty thousand years behint me… older’n Adam and Eve by far… now, this…”
Deena began weeping. He lifted his hand, and she seized it.
“His hand’s getting cold,” murmured Deena. “Deena, bury that damn hat with me… least you kin do… Hey, Deena, who you goin to for help when you hear that monkey chitterin outside the door, huh? Who… ?”
Suddenly, before Dorothy and Deena could push him back down, he sat up. At the same time, lightning hammered into the earth nearby and it showed them his eyes, looking past them out into the night.
He spoke, and his voice was stronger, as if life had drained back into him through the holes in his flesh. “Old Guy’s given me a good send-off. Lightnin and thunder. The works. Nothin cheap about him, huh? Why not? He knows this is the end a the trail for me. The last a his worshipers… last a the Paleys…”
He sank back and spoke no more.
My Sister’s Brother
THE SIXTH NIGHT on Mars, Lane wept. le sobbed loudly while tears ran down his cheeks. He smacked his right fist into the palm of his left hand until the flesh burned. He howled with loneliness. He swore the most obscene and blas-phemous oaths he knew.
After a while, he quit weeping. He dried his eyes, downed a shot of Scotch, and felt much better.
He wasn’t ashamed because he had bawled like a woman. After all, there had been a Man who had not been ashamed to weep. He could dissolve in tears the grinding stones within; he was the reed that bent before the wind, not the oak that toppled, roots and all.
Now, the weight and the ache in his breast gone, feeling almost cheerful, he made his scheduled report over the transceiver to the circum-Martian vessel five hundred and eight miles overhead. Then he did what men must do any place in the universe. Afterward, he lay down in the bunk and opened the one personal book he had been allowed to bring along, an anthology of the world’s greatest poetry.
He read here and there, running, pausing for only a line or two, then completing in his head the thousand-times murmured lines. Here and there he read, like a bee tasting the best of the nectar…
MY SISTER’S BROTHER 159
It is the voice of my beloved that knocketh, saying, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled… We have a little sister, And she hath no breasts; What shall we do for our sister In the day when she shall be spoken for? Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
He read on about love and man and woman until he had almost forgotten his troubles. His lids drooped; the book fell from his hand. But he roused himself, climbed out of the bunk, got down on his knees, and prayed that he be forgiven and that his blasphemy and despair be understood. And he prayed that his four lost comrades be found safe and sound. Then he climbed back into the bunk and fell asleep.
At dawn he woke reluctantly to the alarm clocks ringing. Nevertheless, he did not fall back into sleep but rose, turned on the transceiver, filled a cup with water and instant, and dropped in a heat pill. Just as he finished the coffee, he heard Captain Stroyansky’s voice from the ‘ceiver. Stroyansky spoke with barely a trace of Slavic accent.
“Cardigan Lane? You awake?”
“More or less. How are you?”
“If we weren’t worried about all of you down there, we’d be fine.”
“I know. Well, what are your orders?”
“There is only one thing to do, Lane. You must go look for the others. Otherwise, you cannot get back up to us. It takes at least two more men to pilot the rocket.”
“Theoretically, one man can pilot the beast,” replied Lane. “But it’s uncertain. However, that doesn’t matter. I’m leaving at once to look for the others. I’d do that even if you ordered otherwise.”
Stroyansky chuckled. Then he barked like a seal. “The success of the expedition is more important than the fate of four men. Theoretically, anyway. But if I were in your shoes, and I’m glad I’m not, I would do the same. So, good luck, Lane.”
“Thanks,” said Lane. “I’ll need more than luck. I’ll also need God’s help. I suppose He’s here, even if the place does look God forsaken.”
He looked through the transparent double plastic walls of the dome.
“The wind’s blowing about twenty-five miles an hour. The dust is covering the tractor tracks. I have to get going before they’re covered up entirely. My supplies are all packed; I’ve enough food, air, and water to last me six days. It makes a big package, the air tanks and the sleeping tent bulk large. It’s over a hundred Earth pounds, but here only about forty. I’m also taking a rope, a knife, a pickax, a flare pistol, half a dozen flares. And a walkie-talkie.